


He's Shorn, We're Torn

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Hugs, Ric Grayson is a farce, so many hugs, we spit on the grave of comic canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 15:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16370420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: “Did you see him?” Damian asked. His voice was still tight enough to cut glass, but something shifted beneath. It had been a long month for him, for all of them, without Dick.





	He's Shorn, We're Torn

**Author's Note:**

> I got really mad at the whole "Ric" Grayson nonsense and decided to chuck it out while simultaneously stealing the haircut to see what the fam would think.

Bruce Wayne didn’t like to putter. He found it an inefficient movement, undignified, and an unnecessary tell. As a billionaire, Bruce could afford any number of eccentricities, including puttering, if he so chose, but a billionaire _businessman_ should never display the uncertainties that puttering revealed. When Bruce walked, he strode, propelling himself decisively from Point A to Point B. If he must move as Brucie, the silly playboy, he could saunter. As Batman, Bruce wouldn’t dream of puttering. He had trained himself in the way of total stillness, of letting his anxiety and restlessness sink into himself and then dissipate, leaving him as immovable and obdurate as stone.

It was a hard mentality to shake, even inside the walls of the Manor, away from unfriendly eyes, and Bruce wasn’t one to give in for the sake of mere comfort. So although his calf muscles strained and his hands remained wrapped around his coffee mug, he counted his breaths and held still. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t rise from his chair. He didn’t follow the tug of his heartstrings up the stairs. He waited, and he breathed.

Damian, for all his preternatural maturity, had no such compulsion. Bruce’s youngest blew in with all the focused energy of an avalanche.

“Where is Grayson?” Damian demanded. “Is he not up? Why are you allowing such slothfulness?”

The boy’s tone was high and strident, a tight scowl pinching his lips as he stopped in front of the kitchen table where Bruce sat. His hair was askew, so Bruce reached out and smoothed out the errant strands. Damian ducked away and set about reordering his hair. He’d let it grow longer recently, not raggedly so, but enough that he could let it swoop and wave over his right eyebrow. The longer hair made for some interesting bedhead, and, at least in this moment, a good distraction for them both.

“He needs his rest,” Bruce replied mildly. “He’ll be down soon.”

It was the truth and hadn’t been meant as a rebuke, but Damian’s cheeks flushed.

“Did you see him?” Damian asked. His voice was still tight enough to cut glass, but something shifted beneath. It had been a long month for him, for all of them, without Dick.

“Briefly. Last night.”

Bruce hadn’t been able to sleep, not until he was sure his son was home. Knowing how badly Dick would need to rest, Bruce hadn’t intercepted his path up the staircase. He did, however, step out of the shadows just enough to let Dick know he was there, that someone had marked his return home, that someone had waited for him.

To Bruce’s mild surprise, Dick had veered off the path to his room to meet Bruce in the hallway. The low-hanging moon shone through the window, illuminating Dick’s bowed shoulders even as the brim of his baseball cap kept his face in shadow.

“Okay?” Dick had asked.

Bruce had nodded, once. There were no new tragedies for Dick to return to, no new graves to mourn over or bedsides to visit. Dick’s throat, washed silver in the moonlight, bobbed.

“Good,” he had rasped. “G’night, B.”

He was alive. He was home. That had to be enough.

Not enough for Damian, however. In Dick’s absence, Damian had vacillated between proud, almost stoic obedience and, at times, outright rebellion. Bruce assumed Dick had charged his younger brother with good behavior while he was away, but Bruce knew the strength of their bond and how the separation had worn on Damian.

Bruce tried to be happy for them, rather than jealous. He was pleased that Dick felt such affection for his little brother, that Damian trusted and loved Dick despite his difficulties with others. He tried not to be bothered that Damian looked to Dick first for direction rather than him. He tried not to brood over the fear that his youngest respected him well enough but didn’t love him the way he did Dick.

Even now, as Damian struggled to hide his anticipation, Bruce sipped his coffee and watched with a bittersweet affection.

“Damian,” he began, but his son’s attention was swept away by the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Damian whirled, nearly rising on tiptoe as he restrained himself from bolting to the door. The corner of Bruce’s lips quirked upward despite his best efforts. There were times he forgot how very young Damian was, and it was a soft delight to be reminded.

Bruce took another sip of his coffee and let his gaze flick to the doorway. He might not be balancing on his toes, but it would be good to see Dick in the morning light.

To Bruce’s sheepish guilt, the twinge in his chest matched Damian’s expansive groan when a sleepy-eyed Tim shuffled into the kitchen.

“‘llo to you, too,” Tim muttered. His voice was thick and crackling with sleep—or perhaps exhaustion, Bruce conceded, taking in Tim’s jeans and wrinkled t-shirt.

“All-nighter?” Bruce asked as his middle child nudged over a chair and slumped into the seat. He thought he’d kept his voice perfectly neutral, but Tim held up a warning finger.

“No lectures.” Tim rested his elbow heavily against the tabletop and dragged his long fingers through his hair. “I’m too tired and it won’t change my behavior anyways.”

“ _You_ are not Richard,” Damian hissed.

“No doi.” Tim yawned so widely that his jaw popped, then blinked twice and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I thought Dick came back last night? He’s not down yet?”

Ah. So that was why Tim was here rather than on his way to bed.

“Not yet,” Bruce answered. He rested his hand on the back of Tim’s neck and squeezed gently. “You should head to bed.”

Tim yawned again, leaning into Bruce’s touch like a cat. It still surprised Bruce how affectionate his sons could be when given the opportunity. Damian appeared next to his elbow, not touching Bruce but crowding him as much as he could while still maintaining a level of haughtiness.

“Was he badly hurt, Father?” Damian asked quietly.

“Tim is sitting right here.” Bruce kept his voice so dry it was almost popping with static. “He appears to be a little broken in the head, but otherwise fine.”

Tim snorted and leaned forward against his curled arms, while Damian snapped, “ _Father._ ”

Bruce leaned back in his chair, keeping his hand on the back of Tim’s neck, his thumb methodically digging into the knots in the muscle, and pulled back his other arm. When Damian hesitated, Bruce wrapped his arm around the boy and carefully pulled him in. He had promised Dick he would make an effort to be “less you,” as Dick had put it. And it _had_ been an effort, but Bruce was trying. Still, it was a 50/50 shot whether Damian would acquiesce or try to stab him. Thankfully, today seemed to be a non-stabbing day.

“I know no more than you,” Bruce murmured. Not _strictly_ true, since the Justice League had given him more details than he’d shared with the family, but he couldn’t speak to Dick’s injuries. “He was standing under his own power last night with no visible injuries. That’s something.”

Another derisive noise from Tim, who at this point was nearly asleep on the table. “Not much in this family. You’d find a way to stand on your own even if you lost both legs.”

“Who lost both legs?” came a voice from the doorway.

“Richard!” Damian ducked under Bruce’s arm and was hurtling around the table before Tim had even fully lifted his head. Had he been a normal child, he probably would have crashed fully into his big brother’s stomach and held on without a problem.

Damian skidded to a sudden halt mere feet from Dick. His back was to Bruce, but his shoulders had gone stiff, his hands hanging ready by his sides.

“Hey Little D,” Dick said with a smile. “What, no hug? I swear I showered.”

Next to Bruce, Tim gave his eyes a rub and stood. “Either I’ve already passed into the hallucination stage, or Dick is bald. Someone tell me which one.”

Bruce often didn’t find himself wrong-footed. Gotham’s denizens provided a life too strange by half. He communed with literal aliens and sorcerers. The bizarre was the mundane. But Dick Grayson had no hair and it was, to use the common parlance, freaking Bruce out.

Dick stood in the doorway, his easy smile underscored by the dark shadows under his eyes and the lines on his face that ran deeper than they had a month ago. Bruce quickly catalogued the other, subtler signs of trouble. The loose way his pajamas hung on his frame, the slight shifting of his weight off his right leg, the fading marks on his wrists, the new sharpness to his cheekbones. Most noticeable, though, was the crusting scab on the side of Dick’s head, visible through the shorn stubble where Dick’s thick hair had once been.

“Come on, Dames.” Dick lowered himself into a crouch with a grunt that Bruce suspected was less playful than Dick would have them believe. “You don’t like the new ‘do? I’m hurt.”

Damian flicked a strand of his own hair off his forehead, and Bruce wondered how long its length would last now that its inspiration was gone.

“You look different.” And Damian, for all his strengths, was still a child with control issues. Different was rarely ever good.

Dick kept his soft blue eyes on his brother. “Still me, though.” He still had one arm outstretched. “Come on.” When Damian still hesitated, he pushed himself upright and shrugged. “That’s alright. I bet Tim’ll hug me.”

Tim had been staring along with Bruce, but he shook himself from his daze and stepped forward tentatively.

“No, back off.” Damian hurled himself forward and wrapped his arms around Dick’s waist. Over his head, Dick winked at Tim, who rolled his eyes.

Bruce understood Damian’s hesitation. Dick wasn’t made different by his new lack of hair, but… Dick’s hair was a part of who he was.

Damian’s obsession with independence reasserted itself quickly, and he released Dick to hurry back behind the kitchen island. “Alfred left breakfast for you,” he announced. “He’s at the store, and he said you are to eat everything on this tray before he returns.”

“Guess I better get started, then.” Dick stepped forward, one hand casually still clutching the doorframe, then reached to fold his other brother into a hug. Bruce couldn’t hear the murmured words exchanged, but he caught the slight nod from Tim, the smile from Dick, and the way Tim’s eyes kept trailing back to Dick’s scalp even as he rubbed his face wearily.

“You should get to bed, Timbo. What, I’m gone for a couple weeks and you forget how to function?” Dick teased.

“It was over a month, Dick,” Tim said, exasperated, then pointed to the circles under his brother’s eyes. “And you’re one to talk.”

“Drake has slept an approximate total of six hours this week,” Damian announced from the counter. His forehead furrowed as he concentrated on lifting the heavy breakfast tray.

“Rat snitch!” Tim shot a glare into the kitchen. “Were you spying on me?”

Damian sniffed. “You are not important enough to spy on. But my observation skills are superb.”

“Your _snitch_ skills are superb, you bent-nosed fink!”

As the kitchen exploded into loud arguments, Dick shot Bruce a wry smile and mouthed, _So glad to be back._

Tim had abandoned Dick to squabble with Damian, so Bruce stepped forward to greet his eldest, or perhaps just to support him. That head wound worried Bruce, as did the weary lines on his face, and the thought of other injuries Bruce couldn’t see. Before Bruce could reach his side, however, a new voice boomed over the noise.

“Hey Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, pipe down.” Jason shouldered his way into the kitchen, laundry basket perched on one hip. They both ignored him, so he crossed over and smartly smacked each on the back of the head with his free hand.

“Jay,” Bruce began, not sure if he was up to the task of scolding Jason right this second, but he was cut off.

“You let them act like this in front of guests?” Jason asked. He snorted, then flipped a loose curl out of his eye. “Dang, B. You’ve gone soft.”

_Guests?_

“Are you for real right now?” Dick asked, exhaustion momentarily wiped away by amusement.

“Listen, pal, I—“ Jason froze, mid-sentence and mid-step, his face going slack.

 _Oh._ Bruce felt his stomach sink and twist out of sympathy for both his boys.

“You really didn’t recognize me, Little Wing?” Dick asked softly. He was smiling, but the expression had lost its glow. “Is the hair really that bad?”

A myriad of expression passed across Jason’s face, fluttering like the dappled shadows of leaves in a breeze. Even Bruce, as well as he knew that face, might not have been able to track them if the emotions hadn’t been echoing in his own chest for the last ten minutes. Surprise deepening into shock. Simple, stunning confusion. The sickening, swooping drop of realization. And more than a touch of sorrow. All recognizable, but not what Bruce had expected to see.

Bruce couldn’t know, of course, but he wondered. Was Jason upset imagining what that shorn head represented? The month away, the danger, the captivity, the other hidden horrors they might never know of? Or because it was one more piece of an old life lost? Bruce remembered, suddenly, standing just outside a bedroom door, listening with held breath as his ward and his newly adopted son talked. He remembered defensive banter, quiet laughter, and the fruity fragrance of hair gel as Dick fixed his own hair, then carefully helped his new little brother with his. It had been one of the very few brotherly moments they’d shared before Jason’s… before Jason had gone away.

But here, in the present, Jason was already on the move, whatever he had felt carefully shoved away and hidden beneath a deliberately irritating smirk. “It sucks asphalt, Dickie,” he said, even as he stepped forward and hooked a meaty arm around Dick’s neck. “You look like a trauma patient. You look like a Furiosa look-alike contest reject. You look—"

“Alright, alright,” Dick interrupted. With a quick twist, he broke out of Jason’s hold, then just as quickly snagged his brother’s sleeve and pulled him into a hug. His lips moved, voice too low for Bruce to hear, but he thought it was something like _Glad to see you, too, brat._

“Richard, your _breakfast_!” Damian called, voice so shrill it set Bruce’s teeth on edge.

“Tea’s cold,” Tim pointed out, making no move to help his little brother with the heavy tray. He leaned sleepily against the counter and yawned before saying, “You'll have to make it again.”

“Alfred’s tea? The oolong?” Jason asked, dropping the basket to the floor as he stepped away from Dick and toward the other two boys. “Don’t you dare. You idiots don’t have the skills. I’ll make it.”

“Fine. I’m going to—“

“You aren’t going anywhere. You’re going to take this tray to the table, and Demon Brat here’s going to pop the plate of eggs back in the oven to warm them up. No, the _oven_ , not the microwave, you beast.”

For the moment abandoned, Dick scratched the back of his head and looked around the kitchen. Bruce seized the opening and was at his side a heartbeat later.

“Hey B,” Dick murmured.

“G.I. Jane,” Bruce replied.

Dick huffed a laugh. “I really didn’t expect everyone to be so…”

“It’s a change.”

Dick tilted his head thoughtfully. “It’s just hair.”

It wasn’t, though. Bruce felt a bit like the sitcom moms he had always mocked, the tightly wound, pearl-clutching women who bemoaned their rebellious teenage daughters hacking off their beautiful hair.

Dick’s soft, shining waves of hair, gone. The strands Bruce had kissed goodnight, pressed his nose into during the rare hug, pushed off sweaty skin in illness, tousled in play… gone. Knowing that it hadn’t been Dick’s choice only made the loss ache more. Dick looked older without his hair. Harder. More serious. There was no ridiculous pompadour or boy band bangs to distract from the fine wrinkles around his eyes or the creases in his forehead.

Not for the first time, Bruce wondered where his goofy little acrobat had gone.

“It’ll grow back, if you want it to,” Bruce agreed carefully. “And in the meantime, we’ll all have to deal with Jason’s jealousy.”

Dick slanted him a questioning look.

“Give him time to adjust, and he’ll be angry he didn’t think of shaving his head first,” Bruce predicted, making Dick laugh.

"I'll take it.” Dick grinned, a full, bright smile that eased the lines in his face.

_Ah, there's my boy._

“And what about you? Are you jealous, too?” _Are you upset? Are you feeling just as weird as everyone else but hiding it better? Did you miss me?_

“Hardly,” Bruce replied. He kept his hand on Dick’s shoulder, palm flat against warm muscle as he guided Dick to the kitchen table. “My hair is a national treasure. So says People magazine.”

_I’m fine. Of course I missed you. Every second of every day._

And Alfred said they had trouble communicating.

Dick let out a startled _whoop_ as a flying body latched onto him from behind. “Hey, Cass.”

Cass giggled, eyes bright and cheeks flushed from her workout. “About time.” She wrapped her arms around Dick’s neck, sneakered feet dangling just off the ground.

“Cassandra. Don’t break your brother.”

Dick ducked forward, letting Cassandra roll off his back and onto her feet. She landed with cat-like poise, a small smile on her lips. Instead of recoiling from Dick’s lack of hair, Cass’s smile widened into a grin as she reached up and almost reverently ran her palm along the side of Dick’s head.

“Fuzzy,” she announced, then did it again twice more before kissing Dick’s cheek and bounding away.

“She’s going to eat all my bacon, isn’t she?” Dick asked mournfully.

“Probably. I’d say Damian will defend your bacon, but…” Bruce trailed off.

“But it’s Cass,” Dick finished.

“But it’s Cass,” Bruce agreed.

Behind the kitchen island, Jason yelled as Damian lunged for Cass and nearly wiped out Alfred’s tea set. In the corner, Tim sat on the counter and snored softly against the side of the refrigerator.

Bruce shook his head and considered retreating to his den.

“Hey, Bruce?” Dick said, voice pitched to carry just under the uproar.

“Mm?”

“I’ve been gone a month. Think I could get a hug sometime soon?”

Bruce’s gaze swung to his eldest. _It’s like living with a freaking robot!_ screamed the ghosts of old arguments. _Sometimes I don’t even think you like me. What is wrong with you?_

Dick looked up at him, blue eyes dancing, the faded echoes in Bruce’s head alone. Or, if they weren’t, so far buried beneath hard-earned understanding and patience that they no longer wielded the power to cut. Perhaps changes weren’t all bad.

Bruce folded Dick into a hug, the fierce, two-armed kind that kept Dick close to his heart.

“Glad to have you home, son.”


End file.
